Sunday, May 09, 2010

Bill of Privileges

I was relieved when Hillary Clinton lost the primary election, and am becoming more so now as she pursues her hawkish stance against Iran and in her stand regarding the “war on terror.” To see her standing with Lieberman on this idiotic thing about stripping people of their citizenship based on assumptions that they are conspiring with terrorists takes my relief to yet another level.

“United States citizenship is a privilege,” the New York Times quotes her. “It is not a right. People who are serving foreign powers — or in this case, foreign terrorists — are clearly in violation, in my personal opinion, of that oath which they swore when they became citizens.”

Presumably, then, she would regard the first ten amendments to our constitution as the "Bill of Privileges" rather than the "Bill of Rights."

And to think, this person actually graduated from law school.

That she is talking about “that oath which they swore when they became citizens,” suggests that she may be referring to naturalized citizens rather than to citizens generally, although she does not say that. The idea, however, that there are classes of citizenship, or that she might think there are, rather appalls me. Citizenship is a right if you are born here, she would be saying, but it is merely a privilege if you are not.

What bothers me even more is that the Democratic leadership generally seems to be supporting this ridiculous idea. The same article quotes Nancy Pelosi as supporting the “spirit” of the measure, whatever the hell that means. It doesn’t mean anything good, that’s for sure.

Once again Democrats are proving that they are utterly clueless when it comes to the meaning of “strength on national security,” that they have even less idea of how to deal with that issue than Republicans do, and that they will pander and fear monger with the worst of the Republicans to serve their own interests.

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